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IRAQ
IN FRAGMENTS
James Langley’s documentary has made a huge impact since
premiering at Sundance just over a year ago: it was one of
the big winners at Park City, has picked up numerous awards
on the festival circuit, and is up for the Best Documentary
Oscar. The film is divided into three parts, each representing
one of the social factions in Iraq’s fragmented society:
an orphaned 11-year-old Sunni apprenticed to a curmudgeonly
mechanic, Shiite followers of Muqtada al-Sadr preparing for
local elections, and Kurdish farmers who are enjoying greater
freedom and privileges after the arrival of U.S. troops. Langley
spent over two years in Iraq shooting the film, and has created
that rare thing, an incisive, enquiring documentary that is
also visually extremely cinematic.
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ANTIBODIES
One of Germany’s big hits of 2005, teutonic wunderkind
Christian Alvart’s taut psychological chiller finally
reaches our shores this week. With a plot that bears more
than a passing resemblance to Silence of the Lambs, Antibodies
focuses on Michael Martens (Wotan Wilke Möhring) a small
town policeman trying to solve the rape and murder of a local
13-year-old girl who goes to the big city to interrogate Gabriel
Engel (André Hennicke), a recently-captured pedophile
serial killer who has confessed to numerous similar crimes.
But as Engel plays mind games with Martens, the cop starts
to believe his own teenage son may be the guilty party. Alvart
relies more on unseen horrors rather than straightforward
gore, and is not only a slick stylist but also incorporates
religious imagery (Gabriel Engel = Angel Gabriel) and asks
the age-old question about exactly where the line between
good and evil lies.
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BERLINALE:
ODD CONNECTIONS
Halfway through many film festivals, I inevitably begin to
see patterns, echoes, omens, invisible threads woven through
the very fabric of the festival. Nothing so great as a Zeitgeist,
what I experience is only a sense of the uncanny, the sensation
of unrelated things feeling inexplicably familiar. Some connections
suggest a sort of cultural currency that I don't yet trade
in. Take, for example, the fact that the idea -- rather than
the country -- of Switzerland pops up in two Korean films.
In Dasepo Naughty Girls, the dreamboat teenage boy (who is
clearly Korean) hails from that European hideaway, and then
a female inmate in Park Chan-wook's nuthouse comedy I'm A
Cyborg, But That's Ok imagines herself ala Heidi singing in
the Swiss alps. Does Switzerland mean something to the Koreans
like what Japan meant in 80s New Wave music? |
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THE YEAR
IN SELF-DISTRIBUTION
Over at his Wild Diner Films blog, Sujewa Ekanayake is asking
what should be more than a rhetorical question: "So,
self-distribution in 2006: how did it go?" He's requesting
that DIY distributing filmmakers share some of their experiences
and to start it off, he's posted the numbers on his own Date
Number One. |
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ZODIAC
X NINE
For those of you excited about the March 2 release of David
Fincher's latest, Zodiac, IESB.net has posted nine clips from
the film. And, if you haven't read it yet, check out Jamie
Stuart's "Are We there Yet?", an article on HD cinematography
that talks with d.p. Harris Savides about his work on the
film.
Read
the complete stories at Filmmakermagazine's Blog... |
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PALM
SPRINGS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL - BY HOWARD FEINSTEIN
The Palm Springs International Film Festival (January 4-15),
with a budget around $2.8 million, advertises itself as the
fest “where star power and the cinema come together.”
The order is significant. On opening weekend, this 18th edition
and the fourth under director Darryl Macdonald hosted a meretricious
gala at the Convention Center — replete with a video-clip
homage to emcee Mary Hart of Entertainment Tonight —
saluting the canonized talents of the past year. These shining
lights feasted with, and courted from the stage, 1,800 high-rollers
— good PR for the studios as awards season commenced.
Among the honorees were Kate Winslet, Jessica Biel, and the
entire cast of Babel (Brad, too), including Cate Blanchett,
who, at just 37, received a career achievement award. The
festival invited the L.A. film press, nearly all of whom returned
home by the next morning with their Tiffany swag...
Click
here for the rest of the article
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